B2B buying behavior is changing faster than most teams’ playbooks. Here are three quick stories on how buyers are using AI, what’s working in content, and where “everyday AI” for revenue teams is headed.
Recent reports show that buyers are increasingly turning to tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews to research categories, shortlist vendors, and compare options before they ever hit a contact form or talk to sales. As many as 94% of B2B buyers now use AI tools somewhere in their buying process.
At the same time, 96% of B2B companies fail to appear in results when buyers search for their services. (Sources: DesignRush, Demand Gen Report)
While generative AI and conversational search are becoming a highly valued information source for B2B buyers, the same discovery tools render the majority of vendors nearly invisible.
Research found that for most brands, AI systems only mention them once the buyer already knows their name. This means AI is reinforcing existing category leaders instead of helping new players break through.
This is significant both for buyers and for vendors working towards optimizing AI visibility.
Searches for “top providers” may not render the most highly-rated companies in response, but rather, companies an LLM expects you to have existing familiarity with.
It’s time to treat AI discovery the way we treated Google a decade ago: as a channel where you either show up in the earliest shortlists, or you don’t get invited to the conversation at all. You can start by:
It may also be worth running targeted paid campaigns to your ICP so these buyers are more likely to recognize your brand name when they see it referenced. Even when they don’t click the ad, that familiarity can pay off later when AI tools surface you as an option and the buyer chooses which result to explore.
A recent Demand Gen Report highlights that 82% of marketers now prioritize short‑form video for B2B, and 68% are increasing investment in interactive content like quizzes, assessments, and ROI calculators, reflecting buyers’ preference for fast, self‑guided, and engaging formats.
If the previous story makes you want to shift your content strategy, here are some starting points. Short‑form and interactive formats like video, simple assessments, and custom tools match how modern buyers want to learn. Quickly, on their own time, with as little commitment as possible.
This is exactly why I’ve restructured my own newsletter into a more digestible, scannable format. These formats do more than just capture attention. When someone engages with an email, short video, or uses an ROI calculator, they generate intent signals you can feed back into your CRM. That data can help you identify real interest, prioritize the right accounts and conversations, and refine future content around what actually resonates.
Anthropic just launched Claude for Small Business, a packaged version of Claude aimed at local firms and smaller teams that plugs directly into tools like QuickBooks, HubSpot, Canva, DocuSign, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, and PayPal. It ships with around 15 pre‑built workflows and 15 small‑business skills covering finance, sales, marketing, HR, and support.
This release offers a critical indication of where the market is headed. The “AI coworker” is now a product category of its own. We’re watching AI move from isolated chat windows into operators sitting on top of your existing stack.
For business development teams, that shift has two big implications. First, the baseline is rising: if your competitors are letting AI prep their briefs, surface opportunities from their CRM, and draft targeted outreach tied to real numbers, a purely manual process starts to feel slow and dated. Second, the real advantage won’t come from simply using AI, but from configuring it effectively around your own pipeline.